A Bodyguard of Lies
by RabulaTasa
Summary: In a last ditch effort to help their daughter recover from a night of terror, the Mansons purchase a half-ghost bodyguard from the Guys in White. Just remember, though: extremism in the in the defense of liberty is no vice. An AU that, to be completely honest, is just a tad on the uncomfortable side of things.


**Disclaimer**: I don't own Danny Phantom.

* * *

_**They That Led Us Away Captive**_

_By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion.  
__As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the trees that are therein.  
_-Psalm 137:1-2

It was a dark and stormy night.

A thunderous crash shook the warehouse walls, forcing one Samantha "Sam" Manson back into the waking world against her will. Her head throbbed viciously and she moaned softly at the pain. Her hands made their way to massage her temples—

_Sam was stomping down the sidewalk, not caring in the least about the torrential downpour that had changed her appearance from "well-off Goth girl" to "drowned rat" in two seconds flat. She couldn't believe the gall of her parents: how dare they threaten to ground her for refusing to go on a date with some jerk-faced self-entitled pig of a son of one of their ultra-rich friends?! She was sixteen, for crying out loud, and certainly capable of deciding for herself who _not_ to date!_

_The sound of screeching tires snapped her from her indignation just in time to catch sight of a pair of headlights coming at her from behind before everything went black._

-only to find that she couldn't move them from behind her back. The realization that she was bound in an unfamiliar setting sent a surge of panic through her that required every bit of willpower to fight down. Forcing herself to remain still, she took stock of her surroundings.

Heavy manacles bound her wrists together, and by the feel of things they were secured around a pole, very effectively keeping her in place. The warehouse itself was poorly lit in some areas and completely dark in others, but what she could see of it was bare… and by the dusty state of things, had been so for quite some time. Seeing nothing of interest, she closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could. For a minute the only noise she could hear was the clatter of raindrops smacking against her makeshift prison and the occasional peal of thunder in the distance, but as she focused the sound of voices filtered through the background noise. As she listened, Sam shifted slightly to get more comfortable and inadvertently knocked her shackles against the pole behind her with a soft '_clang_.'

Immediately the sound of conversation halted and two figures emerged from the shadows to approach her. Her two captors (she presumed) were of similar height but very different builds—one was slender and whiplike and the other curvaceous and obviously female—and both wore identical attire: both sported black trousers tucked into heavy black combat boots, black long-sleeved turtlenecks, black gloves, black bulletproof vests, and black ski masks to complete the monochromatic ensemble. Only their mouths and eyes were visible: one set of violet eyes, one set of sky-blue eyes, and two mouths with lips pressed firmly together in apparent consternation.

The pair stopped several feet short of Sam and studied her in silence. An eternity passed, then two, and finally Sam couldn't stand the tension in the air any longer. "So, I'm guessing this is for ransom? Whatever you're asking for, I can't promise my parents will pay: knowing them, they'll want to milk this in the public for as long as possible." Sam was only half joking. Before her grandmother had passed, she was certain that whatever ransom demands that were made for her safe return would be immediately met, and just as immediately followed by as vicious a retaliation as money could buy. Her parents on the other hand were much more image conscious, as well as adamant followers of Winston Churchill's adage "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Whatever these people wanted, she anticipated spending a good while in their company before they got it.

The violet-eyed woman opened her mouth to respond, but her blue-eyed companion immediately thrust out an arm to silence her. The woman blinked in surprise and closed her mouth before stepping back and ceding control of the situation to her colleague. Stepping to within arm's reach of Sam, her captor squatted down to look her in the eye, and Sam had the sudden realization that she _knew_ the person in front of her. "You!" she shouted without thinking, "I know you!". Her jailer stared back in silence for a few more moments, then abruptly stood back up and walked away.

"Do it."

At those words, a veritable behemoth of a man dressed much the same as his partners in crime soundlessly stepped into the light and stalked towards his prisoner. As an enormous hand reached out to Sam, she let out a desperate scream and prayed that someone would hear her over the storm raging outside.

* * *

Officer Timothy McGrady slowly cruised through the warehouse district of Amity Park, casually keeping an eye out for anything that looked like suspicious activity. He wasn't expecting much—criminals didn't like doing business out in a frog-drowner like this anymore than the next guy, after all—but patrolling this area was his job, and if the criminal element decided to stay home tonight, so much the better: less paperwork for him, after all.

His musings were interrupted as a blurred figure dashed in front of his patrol car and froze in his headlights. With a loud curse, McGrady slammed on his brakes and gave a silent prayer of thanks that he had been going as slowly as he had been.

Jumping out of his car into the rain, he ran to the front of his vehicle. Wincing internally as the slim figure peeled herself off of his hood—apparently he hadn't been going slowly enough to avoid a collision altogether—he laid a hand gently on the girl's shoulder. "Miss, are you okay?"

The girl reacted as though he had violently shocked her, leaping back with a shriek and looking around in a panic. Raising his hands and taking a step backwards, he tried to calm her down. "Miss," he shouted to make himself heard over the weather, "are you okay? I'm Officer McGrady, with the Amity Park police. Are you in any kind of danger?"

At that, the girl collapsed weeping to the street like a marionette with its strings cut. "Please," she choked out between heaving sobs, "help me!"

* * *

Jeremy and Pamela Manson were visibly uncomfortable as they described their plight to the man in the white suit. The official public function of the Guys in White was to capture and study paranormal beings in the name of public safety, but everyone knew what their real purpose was: they weaponized what they could and sold everything to the highest bidder. While that usually meant the military, occasionally private citizens of sufficient means could find themselves in a position to acquire one of these dangerous—but useful—creatures for their own use. Until today, the Mansons would have never dreamed of so much as setting foot in a place such as this... but desperate times called for desperate measures.

"You understand," Jeremy Manson explained to the man in the white suit, "this is our last resort. If this doesn't work, we don't know what else we can do to help her. Ever since the attack, Samantha starts to panic at the mere _thought_ of leaving the house! She's withdrawn, she jumps whenever her mother or I or one of the staff so much as enter the room—"

"She hasn't even tried to argue with me over her clothes!" a shell-shocked Pamela Manson interrupted, nodding in agreement with her husband. "I gave her a pink frilly dress to wear last week and she just put it on and stared off into space!"

"Mmhmm," nodded the Guy in White. "So what you're looking for is… what, exactly?"

The Mansons looked at each other for a moment before responding. "We want a bodyguard, someone to convince Samantha that she's _safe_ around. They can't be too physically intimidating—our last attempt seemed to trigger one of her panic attacks—but otherwise we want the best you have in stock. Money is _not_ an object."

The Guy grinned confidently at the distraught parents. "I think I have just what you need. If you will follow me this way?" he asked as he stood up and walked out from behind his desk. Pamela and Jeremy rose to their feet as well, their expressions a mixture of relief and nervous anxiety. Following the man who had introduced himself to the couple as "Agent O," they made their way out the door of the office and through a labyrinth of sterile white hallways punctuated with featureless white doors every twenty feet. After several minutes of wandering, the trio stopped in front of a door that was indistinguishable from any of the others they had passed by on their journey.

"Here we are," O announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Manson, I present to you: Danny Phantom." With that, he opened the door and waved the couple inside. Danny's cell was as plain as it could possibly be: a perfect cube with no visible features aside from the door and a pair of fluorescent lights flickering on the ceiling. The room's sole occupant was similarly nondescript. Standing in the center of the room at attention and staring directly ahead was a raven-haired boy that Jeremy judged to be no more than fourteen years old. If it hadn't been for the black stripe tattooed down the right side of his face identifying the boy as a paranormal entity (and therefore property), he could have easily disappeared into a crowd of three people.

"Phantom here," Agent O explained, "is what we call a 'half ghost,' or 'halfa' for short, and is by far the most _potent_ merchandise we have in stock."

"He… certainly doesn't _look_ the part," muttered Pamela uncertainly. Privately, Jeremy agreed with his wife.

O suppressed a flash of annoyance; they had _specifically requested_ a nonthreatening specimen, after all. "Looks are _very_ much deceiving in this case, ma'am. This guy is military grade firepower: he can turn invisible, walk through walls, fly, throw a bus over a house, create plasma shields and plasma blasts that can penetrate up to an inch and a half of steel. He can freeze targets solid, heals at an accelerated rate, and if you need _real_ firepower he can unleash a sonic attack that can level a fairly decent-sized building. _This_, Mr. and Mrs. Manson, can take out a small army if necessary to protect your daughter, and would be capable of safely and quickly retrieving her from virtually any foreseeable danger."

After a moment of shock, Jeremy took a step to put himself between Phantom and his wife. Seeing this, Agent O chuckled. "Oh, not to worry, he won't lay a finger on any of us. Back when we first laid hands on him two years ago, we were using the standard implanted control chips on all of our captures. Those, we found out, could be overcome through sheer willpower and, in Danny's case, simply phased out of his body. Are you familiar with the NeuroFix nanites?"

The Mansons nodded. A year ago, a medical technology company had made a fortune by inventing nanorobots that could replace damaged nerves and almost overnight restore loss of function due to spinal injuries and the like.

"Well those little miracle workers were actually an early version of what we've started using in all of our merchandise, starting with Danny here. While the NeuroFix nanites can replace short sections of severed nerves and relay transmitted impulses across them, the nanobots we devised to put a leash on _this_ menace to society can not only completely_ remove _and _replace_ the subject's peripheral nervous system, but they can be programmed to recognize and disallow or compel certain actions. Phantom here is programmed, for instance, is currently executing a subroutine that has him stand at attention while I or anyone else is present in the room with him, and as soon as we leave he will regain the ability to move about. His powers are similarly restrained until commanded forth."

"That sounds _awful_," Pamela gasped. Jeremy nodded in agreement, eyes wide in surprise.

"If we couldn't control them, ma'am," Agent O replied with the air of a teacher patiently instructing a particularly slow student, "then we'd have to wipe 'em out, and you'd better believe they'd do the same to use in a heartbeat if they could. Besides," he shrugged, waving a hand at the boy in the middle of the room, "it's not as though he's _human_, after all."

Several moments went by as the Mansons looked at each other, then something passed between them as they came to an agreement. Taking a hold of Pamela's hand, Jeremy asked "So how much does he cost?"

Several minutes later, after Jeremy handed Agent O a nonrefundable (but tax deductible!) check for a significant portion of the Manson family fortune, the pair climbed into the back of their limo and set off for home. Their purchase, they had been told, would be delivered to their house the next day by noon, with all the necessary reprogramming performed to prepare him for his new task. For the entire ride back to the mansion, however, Pamela kept anxiously wringing her hands together, and as they pulled up in front of their home she voiced her worry.

"Samantha isn't going to forgive us for doing this, you know."

"I know, sweetie," he sadly agreed. "That's the _true_ price we're paying to get our daughter back."

* * *

_For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody, in our heaviness: Sing us one of the songs of Zion.  
How Shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?  
_-Psalm 137:3-4


End file.
